Category: <span>Linked</span>

Vitsoe vs USM shelving

By Jay Torres

Fatih Arslan has a Vitsoe 606 set up and talks about the differences between Vitsoe and USM.

Someone asked this question on Twitter recently. Both are great brands with great products that have been used for decades. They are iconic and still used after so many years. This is a subjective comparison; obviously, they are very different regarding looks and usability. I have an extensive Vitsoe 606 setup but plan to extend certain places with USM. Some friends use USM, and I’ve seen them as well.

Come for the information, stay for the beautiful pictures.

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The Technium: 101 Additional Advices

By Jay Torres

Kevin Kelly with another list of great bits of advice.

Six years ago I celebrated my 68th birthday by gifting my children 68 bits of advice I wished I had gotten when I was their age. Every birthday after that I added more bits of advice for them until I had a whole book of bits. That book was published a year ago as Excellent Advice for Living, which many people tell me they read very slowly, just one bit per day. In a few days I will turn 73, so again on my birthday, I offer an additional set of 101 bits of advice I wished I had known earlier. None of these appear in the book; they are all new. If you enjoy these, or find they resonate with your own experience, there are 460 more bits in my Excellent Advice book, all neatly bound between hard covers, in a handy size, ready to gift to a person younger than yourself.

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East Coast quakes are felt farther than West Coast ones

By Jay Torres

The reason? The rocky underground east of the Rocky Mountains is generally hundreds of millions of years older than the subterranean formations east of that range. Being older means that those rocks are harder and denser, and the older fault lines have had more time to heal.

All of that means that seismic waves travel much more easily across the eastern U.S. The reverse is the case in the West, where the much younger faults absorb more of the seismic wave energy, which, as a result, doesn’t spread as efficiently as it does in the East.

I had no idea.

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Smart Words From Smart People · Collab Fund

By Jay Torres

Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever collected some very enlightening quotes. Some that resonate with me.

“I would say the most dangerous thing in the world with a 12-year-old is to try to be his friend. But the worst thing with a 40-year-old is to try to be their parent.” – Chris Davis

“Happiness is that feeling you get right before you need more happiness.” – Don Draper

“People with very high expectations have very low resilience.” – Jensen Huang

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California Today: The best-loved bridges in California

By Jay Torres

The NY Times has a great California-centric newsletter. They often pose questions to readers to then reply and then share those results. They recently asked readers, what was their favorite bridge in California? Of course, people replied with the Bixby Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge. My favorite bridge? The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge.

I lived in the Bay Area for almost 10 years, and the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge is the best. It’s so long, you feel as if you’re alone on a large body of water. And at certain times of the year, the commute home often had amazing sunsets.

I can now say I’ve been quoted in the New York Times. Oh, and here are some sunset pictures from the bridge that I took through the years.

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Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

By Jay Torres

In the New York Times (unlocked article):

In a painfully chilly parking lot in Chicago on Tuesday, Tesla drivers huddled in their cars waiting for a charge.

I understand that I’m privileged that I live in California and that I’m able to charge my EV at home. However, for people who live where it gets to below 0 temperatures and who can’t charge at home, they have to rely on Tesla’s supercharger network or another DC fast charging solution.

We had to do this with our first EV. Since we lived in an apartment, we had to top off at DC fast chargers.

“It ends up being very difficult to make battery electric vehicles work in very cold conditions,” Mr. Brouwer said. “You cannot charge a battery as fast or discharge a battery as fast if it’s cold. There’s no physical way of getting around.”

There’s no way to get around the way how a battery works in cold weather. But we do need to have better access to level 2 charging so people can charge at home overnight.

This is an infrastructure problem, not an EV problem.

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This Warriors Crisis Is Real, And Change Is Coming

By Jay Torres

Ann Killion in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Though Bob Myers won’t admit it, this is exactly why he was ready to leave last year. He could see the unraveling coming, the painful dismantling and uncomfortable choices that lay ahead.

I was talking to a colleague who is also an NBA fan. He and I agree: Bob Myers saw something that not necessarily everyone else did. The 2022 championship was an unexpected surprise and the chances of getting another one with the current roster was not likely. So he planned his exit. Smart man.

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